Ouroboros Spine vi. two hands longing

It was well after brother sun had risen against the backdrop of a sky brushed in shades of orange and pink and red -- so bright and beautiful that the artisan wished she could have pulled them down to earth and dipped her paws in them, that she might use them for her paintings -- when the girl returned from a hunting excursion with an ermine dangling from her jaws. Like the other small pieces of game she had caught, she'd stripped the weasel of its pelt and then sectioned the meat into portions before stashing it in one of the hunters' caches.

After depositing the fur, which was uniquely splotched in browns and whites where the stoat was transitioning from its winter coat to the earthen tones of its spring pelt, at her half-dug densite (intending to cure it later), Lótë set off into the depths of the blackpine at a slow trot. She'd decided to rest for a moment, her energy depleted after hunting the weasel. She relaxed best in the midst of nature and sought to find a corner of the territory to make her own while she recharged, her olivine gaze searching as she wound along the ring of the Spine's summits. At last, she settled on a good spot along the edge of a small clearing in the thick trees, climbing up the slant of a low boulder as she came across it.

From within the embrace of the trees, beneath their shade, she could go unseen amongst the branches and brambles of undergrowth if she remained low to the rock and kept still. She stretched out in a position that would not be too uncomfortable and then waited patiently -- soon rewarded when a small flock of snow quails scuttled slowly out from the grasses and into the clearing a short time later.

They stopped for a moment, unaware of the mousy wolfess who observed them with fascination, pecking and scratching at the grass and melting snow. A few fluttered their wings playfully at each other, chasing and playing as they ran and hopped around one another like wolves might play together. The elven girl noted that their plumage was mottled with brown and white as well, a sign that spring was surely here.